and thighs, Sunbright noted, and wondered why. The man said, 'I-we thank you for our rescue. We hoped to escape such troubles by fleeing the empire. But even here you're overrun.'
Sunbright sliced up a skirt, and wrapped neat bandages around the patient's skull. 'What troubles?' he asked. 'We've heard naught.'
Thick-fingered hands waggled helplessly as the man told him, 'These orcs with the red hand raid everywhere, all around the compass. The emperor's soldiers wear themselves to a nub fighting, but they're like grass fires in drought. And they carry disease. Men partake in raids too. Bandits and pirates loot whole cities and torch them. Cities and towns shut the gates and admit no one, not even their own peasants. Markets and fairs languish. We journeyed to Zenith for the Festival of the Harvest Moon and found naught but empty fields. We've met no buyers, no one with cash, yet everyone wants our horses. The bandits are bloodthirsty, but imperial troops are just as bad. Twice we met small armies that threatened to take the horses in the empire's name, and give us nothing but wooden chits…'
Talk of rampant raids and chaos intrigued Sunbright, the dwarves, and Knucklebones. While the horse traders untangled their mounts and picked up and packed, and Sunbright stitched wounds, the dwarves brewed rose hip tea and unwrapped oak cakes. With the hostlers' permission, they butchered a dead horse and sliced the red meat into long strips. The dwarves cut wood and scraped a fire pit as the short winter day ended and brittle stars winked. Everyone feasted on horse meat and liver and brains that steamed in the frosty air like their breath. The hostlers unfolded curious shaggy ponchos with slits that left their bare arms free.
The hostlers' news was patchy and shaded by personal escapes, but it was clear the empire was inundated by the One King's ravagers. Rumor said Lady Polaris had discussed truce with the One King, but they'd warred instead and blown the top off Widowmaker Mountain. No one knew who controlled what territories. Orcish and imperial armies alike splintered into raiding parties. All strangers were foes, and no place was safe. The hostlers, honest traders once welcome throughout the empire, were war refugees, as were many other folk.
Sunbright went quiet as Hilel, the leader of this horse-trading clan, spoke of meeting 'tall men with horsetails like yours.' Stranded on the grasslands, the Rengarth Barbarians had dug sod houses into low hills. They foraged game from the grasslands, ventured into the forests for food and firewood, but many were waylaid by orcs, and the surviving barbarians were a morose lot, Hilel claimed, starving and haunted-eyed. He'd feared a massacre and the theft of their horses, but the barbarians let them pass without even asking the news. Some mothers and fathers had begged food for their children, who shivered with hunger.
Late in the night, Hilel asked for directions northwest. The brooding Sunbright didn't answer, so Knucklebones explained. 'You can't go on. We've explored with the dwarves. This canyon rises too steeply for horses to mount, and cave bears are big as your horses. They'd eat you and your animals like blueberries.
'Nor can you pass south of the mountains, for the elves kill interlopers. Were it spring, I'd recommend you swing around Vandal Station and follow the Bay of Ascore to the Waterbourne River. But in winter, that'll be frozen. So there really is no way northwest except through the Cold Forest.
'Perhaps they can advise you better at Bandor Village.'
The negative news disheartened the hostlers, who quietly posted guards. Rolling in blankets, Sunbright, Knucklebones, and the dwarves curled by the fire.
But Sunbright didn't sleep.
In the morning, the hostlers buried their dead. Diota, Hilel's wounded wife, had not awakened, so they rigged a travois to ferry her. Thoughts of travois and traveling deepened Sunbright's gloom. With final thanks, the refugees tramped down the canyon. The dwarves, toting hides of horse meat, mounted stone slopes for their base camp. The headquarters was a high, stair-stepping cave that overlooked the High Forest: a place where, by standing on a jutting spire and leaning far out, Sunbright could just see the yellow grasslands where his people huddled in starvation and misery.
While winter closed in, the dwarves had spent weeks exploring the Barren Mountains, which is how they'd stumbled on the orc raid. They crawled into every cave and cleft as if looking to buy the mountains, and indeed, Drigor finally admitted, that's what he intended. The distant Iron Mountains were played out, food and iron ore exhausted, and the encroaching yak-men were too numerous to withstand. So the old dwarf's mission had been two-fold: to warn Sunbright of the flint monster (this, the barbarian still didn't understand), and to seek a new homeland for the Sons of Baltar. With nothing better to do, and safety in numbers, Sunbright and Knucklebones helped, figuring to winter with the dwarves before moving on in spring. They didn't discuss where to go then, for the subject pained Sunbright too deeply. As did the word 'homeland.'
But today's return offered a surprise. For as they passed the base camp's guard, she whispered, 'Them elves are back.'
'We ask again that you speak to your people about truce.'
The same three elves on the same mission. They stood, not sat, in the lowermost cave.
From a broad ledge outside, a crack in the mountain only waist-high gave entrance to a squat chamber hardly head-high. The floor then slanted upward where dwarves had built ladders of tree branches to access the various splintered caves within the mountain. The damp cleft reeked of brown bears, the former inhabitants, and eye- watering smoke, the method that had evicted them. Outside, winter light glittered on frost.
'I cannot approach my people,' Sunbright explained patiently. With him were Drigor, Knucklebones, and Monkberry. 'I am no longer a member of their tribe.'
'They are less a nuisance now,' said the elven woman, 'but we must still guard, and shoot those who trespass. We would rather you humans stay out, so we might better repel the orcs who stream over the mountains in hordes.'
Sunbright was aware of the orc problem. Lately, orcs were thick as ants in spring.
'I'm sorry my people forage for food and wood in your forest.' Sunbright said, tired and ironic. 'Yet there's nothing-eh?'
A tug on his belt. Monkberry's wrinkled face was thoughtful. 'Son,' she said. 'I must talk to you.'
'Now? Can't it wait?'
Monkberry caught Sunbright's ear and towed him toward the cave entrance. Bent almost double, the barbarian hobbled after.
Outside, in glittering cold and bitter wind, Sunbright rubbed his ear while Monkberry clasped arthritic hands and glared up at her son.
'I've thought about our troubles, Sunbright. A lot. You've been away and busy while I've tended the fire, and watching flames always gives one ideas. I have one for you. You must convey this truce offer to our tribe.'
'Not I,' he said, annoyed. 'I couldn't walk within arrow range of the Rengarth.'
Monkberry ignored his objections. 'Our tribe needs help,' she insisted. 'They'll die on the prairie in winter. Already the children hunger, you tell me. They need help, and only you can give it. So you shall.'
'What help?' Warriors were not to be scolded by their mothers, yet he fidgeted like a boy caught stealing apples.
'I don't know. I'm only an old woman who's outlived her usefulness. But you're shaman, because you're blessed-cursed, too-with imagination. You can't lounge around a drafty cave and mope.'
'Mother,' the man drawled, 'if I go near them, I'll be killed!'
'So be it,' she said. 'Go anyway.'
'Hunh?' Sunbright started as if his mother had pulled a knife.
Monkberry took her son's calloused hands in her twisted ones. 'Son, we mustn't question the will of the gods. Our job is to endure. Suffer sometimes, but endure. You've been selected as shaman by blood and birth, by the gods and the tribe. And by your father and myself. Your destiny was laid before you were born.' Her voice grew softer and she said, 'I have only one son. If I lose you, I have nothing. Then would I walk into the first snowstorm and lie down to pass into the next world. But I'll sacrifice you, and myself if need be, to save the Rengarth. For our people must endure. Do you understand?'
Tears in her eyes spoke louder than words. Sunbright Steelshanks of the Raven Clan hugged his mother, and said thickly, 'Yes, mother, I understand. Thank you for reminding me.'
The mother pushed her son away, wiped her wrinkled face, and said, 'Now. What shall you propose? Those elves inside might help us. And the dwarves. And what you think up. You're clever when you don't mope. What shall we try?'
